did things improve when he took the white house? well, in 2009 you might remember the h1n1 influenza pandemic where we were all frightened that we were all going to get flu and die. and there was a vaccine shortage in the united states. in fact, i remember this quite well because, um, i was encouraging all my friends to go get their vaccines and my parents and everybody i knew. microbiologists are very scared of influenza, and rightfully so. about every 40 years or so we have a major pandemic, and sometimes they're very deadly. we're overdue for one of these pandemics, and so this is not fear mongering. i'm not a fear-mongering kind of guy, but influenza is something that keeps microbiologists up at night. so why was there a vaccine shortage in 2009? well, an overly cautious fda did not allow two things. now, this occurred under the obama administration. the first things they did not allow were addy haven'ts, something that extends the vaccine supply. so it stimulates the immune response so you don't feed as much vaccine if you add